Italy: Waking Up With A Hangover

Sophia and Marcello: Marriage Italian Style.
Pluto squares Italy's Neptune.

Some Italians will tell you that their country has essentially been run by a bunch of criminals since World War 2. Some astrologers might agree with that assessment.

The Italian natal chart shows the country's charm (Libra rising, Gemini sun). Its passion (Moon in Scorpio) and its artistic genius (Jupiter and Neptune in Libra). This is a nation that produces beauty (Saturn-Venus). Textiles, fashion, shoes, ceramics, furniture – you name it, Italian design is still the best.

But it's also a place where ideas about beauty and good manners are rigidly enforced (also Saturn-Venus in Cancer, which is a conservative sign). Try walking down the street in Milan in anything other than this year's fashion appropriately adapted for your age and figure. The Italian concept of "bella figura" (good form) is a social straightjacket. This has its ups: no public drunkeness – and downs: oppressive conformity.



What's interesting is that eccentric, wild, dynamic, delightful Sun-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. That's where the endless inventiveness of Italy comes from. And also explains (somewhat) her love affair with the clownish Berlusconi.

The tension between the desire to break free and the rigid rules of decorum in Italy is extreme. Cancer, where Saturn and Venus are, follows Gemini, where Sun-Uranus dance. Signs that follow each other, contradict each other. So Cancer naturally rejects the frivolity, hilarity, anarchism of Gemini anyway. And with combination of planets the contrast is powerful.

Where is the tension defused? In art, cinema, literature, works of the imagination – the 12th house.

But with so much energy going into bella figura, who is actually running the place? The Midheaven (leaders) is closest to Saturn, the planet of rules and duty, but it is in fact moving away from Saturn and towards Pluto, the planet of criminality and subterfuge. Pluto is the lord of the underworld, quite literally.

What's more that Pluto squares and rules the Scorpio Moon in the first house. The Moon is the people. Scorpio is again associated with the underworld, secrets, corruption.

Tearing down the scaffolding at the end of Fellini's 81/2.
"Better to destroy than create something meaningless."

Everyone in Italy is forced into illegality. Famously, the grey economy is bigger than the real one because no one pays taxes. This is a systemic failure. You're a mug to pay taxes if no one else does. And you're a mug to pay taxes if you believe the money goes into the hands of a bunch of thieves. This makes it very hard to reform (which Italian law-makers keep on trying to do) without a revolution. You need to tear the whole thing down and start again, including everyone in the process.

Everything is above the horizon in the Italian chart – except the Moon. Everything is perfectly obvious, in other words, only the people themselves turn a blind eye, perhaps because it is too ugly.

But what of the transits?

Saturn, the planet of comeuppance, is on the Italy's ascendant and exactly squaring the country's natal Saturn: a time of reckoning. First house Saturn transit usually heralds a time of austerity (no kidding) - and a time for playing by the rules. 

I checked to see what was happening last time Italy had Saturn over the ascendant. Here is what I found for 1981 on the BBC website:

Italy in crisis as cabinet resigns
The Italian Prime Minister Arnaldo Forlani and his coalition cabinet have resigned following a scandal over membership of a Masonic lodge.
It follows a police raid on the Arezzo home of financier Lucio Gelli in March that uncovered a list of hundreds of members of the P2 (Propaganda Two) Masonic lodge."

Silvio Berlusconi, the current Italian Prime Minister, was also a member of P2 at the time. This secret group was known as "a state within a state". It's members were implicated in the Vatican Bank scandal, which famously erupted when a man was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London. Some believe that the death of Pope John Paul I had something to do with P2.

But it's not just Saturn that's involved.

The North Node has just opposed Italy's natal NN in Gemini, suggesting a change in the country's direction. When the NN was in this spot before, Berlusconi came to power for the first time.

But this may be a long process for Italy – a complete re-invention that takes many years. I say this because Uranus, the planet of revolution, is going to oppose those charming idealistic, good mannered planets in Libra now and over the next seven years, culminating in an opposition to the Italian ascendant in 2016. The "servants" (6th house) will be biting the master's backside. Then Uranus moves into the house of partners, who could turn out to be just as difficult to handle.

As we know, Pluto and Uranus are busy giving the world an upper cut and a sharp left hook right now, so clearly Uranus is not going to be working alone.

Pluto is going through the third house in Italy's chart: unpleasant truths are going to be exposed. The shite is coming to the surface and every time it seems like it's been flushed away, it'll just come right back up. 

Pluto has already opposed Mercury (communications) in the 9th house of justice and publishing. The third and the ninth houses rule the written and spoken word - all media and broadcasting. This is perhaps Italy's deepest problem right now. Here's how Vanity Fair magazine describes the situation.

"…Berlusconi, as prime minister, controls the three public television networks and, as the force behind the $8.6 billion conglomerate Fininvest, owns the three largest of the country’s four private networks, the largest publishing house, and around 40 magazines—not to mention dozens of other companies ranging from advertising to bookstores, to interactive media, to the soccer team A.C. Milan. He also owns film and TV production and distribution companies, insurance companies and mutual funds, banks, radio stations, and his own corporate university. Imagine a President Donald Trump with the media holdings of Rupert Murdoch..."

If you want to understand Berlusconismo,
watch this.

It's about due for a bit of a Plutonian clear out then.

Pluto is at a hard angle to that idealistic Neptune right now, exposing the lies and corruption; shaking the country awake from it's long sleep. But this is also a very disruptive aspect, churning up the mob.

It'll be interesting to see what happens around 2018 when Pluto opposes Italy's natal Venus and Saturn – that may prove to be the year of total transformation. I wonder if some Italy's women might finally decide they've had enough of the men who run the country.

I'd like to mention the astrologer Frank Clifford, whose seminar I attended here in Oxford last Sunday. He shared some excellent, original ideas about the 12th and 1st houses. I've used them here and they seem to make perfect sense even though they go against received opinion.